A PhD student at HTWK Leipzig received an award at an international conference in France
At the event held from 13 to 17 April 2026 at the JUNIA School of Science and Engineering in Lille, France, Dipl.-Ing. Maissa Taktak from the Smart Diagnostics and Online Monitoring research group, led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Faouzi Derbel, received the Best Presentation Award. The award was presented by an international jury comprising renowned scientists and representatives from industry during the closing ceremony on 17 April 2026 – in recognition of the outstanding quality, clarity and scientific excellence of her presentation.
The Best Presentation Award recognises, amongst other things, the clarity and didactic quality of the slides, the strength of the scientific argumentation, the originality of the approach compared to the current state of research, the rigour of the methodology and interpretation of results, and the overall quality of the presentation delivered in English.
Forecasting household electricity demand
The award-winning presentation, entitled “Enhanced Household Energy Consumption Forecasting Through Signal Processing and Deep Learning Architectures”, focuses on the accurate forecasting of household electricity demand – a key requirement for smart grid management and the efficient integration of renewable energy. Conventional forecasting models often fail to reliably capture the complex and non-stationary temporal patterns in household load data.
The proposed approach combines classical signal processing techniques with modern deep learning architectures. The research is being carried out as part of the PhD thesis of Dipl.-Ing. Maissa Taktak in the Smart Diagnostics and Online Monitoring research group, under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Faouzi Derbel at HTWK Leipzig. The scientific value of this research is reflected in several publications in international, peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. One of these publications was also awarded third place in the Best Paper Award at the ‘Power Systems & Smart Energies’ conference, held as part of the 23rd International Multi-Conference on Systems, Signals and Devices (SSD).
About the event
The International Days on Intelligent Energy Systems is an intensive, multidisciplinary continuing professional development event focusing on current topics relating to intelligent and sustainable energy systems. Co-funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, the event is organised by JUNIA in collaboration with L2EP (Laboratoire d’électrotechnique et d’électronique de puissance de Lille). It is aimed at PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and early-career academics, and brings together participants from a network of leading European universities and research institutions, including the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra (Portugal), the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (Portugal), POLITEHNICA University of Bucharest (Romania), the University of Calabria (Italy), the University of Pavia (Italy), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and the University of Mons (Belgium).
The programme covered topics such as smart grids and intelligent energy management, optimisation of energy systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning for energy systems, consumption and generation forecasts, energy storage and vehicle-to-grid integration, as well as digital platforms for real-world energy applications. It comprised nine lectures by international experts, three practice-oriented workshops, presentations by PhD students with feedback from experts, and a field trip to a smart grid site. All 23 participants – PhD students and postdoctoral researchers – also presented their research in an open poster session.
